THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE TEN KATE. 513 



finally in Les Natchez. Chateaubriand says that the life story of 

 Atala was told him by a Seminole, which seems very doubtful. Les 

 Natchez is based on an episode of French colonial history in the 

 first half of the eighteenth century. In writing this novel, he bor- 

 rowed his data from various sources, chiefly from Charlevoix, and 

 perhaps also from Le Page du Pratz. Chactas and his maiden love, 

 Atala, Celuta, the Natchez wife of the unfortunate Rene, not to men- 

 tion others of Chateaubriand's Indians, are all very unreal, psycho- 

 logically untrue. Their maudlin sentimentality, as well as their fre- 

 quent laments and weeping and speaking " la langue de la cour de 

 Louis XIV," 8 smack of the theater. These defects are, of course, 

 partly due to the time in which he wrote. 



From the foregoing we may draw the inference that ethnologi- 

 cally Chateaubriand's American works can not be taken seriously. 

 As a piece of literature, however, the tragic idyl, Atala, is generally 

 considered to be a masterpiece, far superior to Les Natchez. 



A few examples of Chateaubriand's fallacies will suffice to show 

 his worthlessness as an Americanist. 



In the Epilogue of Atala Chateaubriand asserts that he met (in 

 1791) the last remnant of the Natchez tribe near Niagara Falls, car- 

 rying with them the bones of their fathers. This, of course, is im- 

 possible, for after the defeat these Indians suffered at the hands of 

 Governor Perrier in 1731, the Natchez scattered and mainly took 

 refuge among the Chickasaws, Cherokee, and Creeks. Among the 

 last mentioned tribe Swann found, in 1791, more than one Natchez 

 village. 7 In Les Natchez the names of Manitou, Kitchimanitou, 

 Michabou, and Athaensic are frequently met with as being Natchez 

 gods, while they are in fact Algonkin and Huron. But these blun- 

 ders are not worse than the description of the great council of many 

 tribes — Natchez, Indians from the Atlantic coast regions and Mex- 

 ico, and even Eskimo being among them — which was held on the 

 northern shore of Lake Superior; or more absurd than the appear- 

 ance at New Orleans of a flotilla of canoes manned by Pawnee 

 Indians. 



He who wants to judge Chateaubriand as an ethnologist and to- 

 pographer ought to compare his data with those of Doctor Swanton 8 

 concerning the Natchez Indians. 



Among the great German poets I know of but three who inci- 

 dentally wrote about Indians. These are Schiller, Adelbert von 

 Chamisso, and Nicolaus Lenau. Only the two latter visited America. 

 Where Schiller got the motives of his Nadowessiers Todtenlied I do 



6 Henri-Fre"de"ric Amiel, Fragments d'un Journal intime, 9th edit., t. I, p. 132. 



7 John R. Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley, etc., p. 253 (Bulle- 

 tin 43, Bur. Am. Ethnology, Washington, 1911). 



8 Op. cit, pp. 45-257. 



